AIMA

17 January 2011

The Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA), the global hedge fund association, has called for the implemented form of the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) to be flexible, proportionate and based on the principles of openness and transparency.

AIMA set out its recommendations in a consultation response sent to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). ESMA (then known as the Committee of European Securities Regulators) released a Call for Evidence last month ahead of the rule-making “Level 2” of the AIFMD process. The industry was asked to respond in January to the main issues raised in the document and AIMA immediately established a working group of member firms to study the proposals and contribute to the response.

“We welcome the opportunity to engage constructively in AIFMD implementation and are happy that ESMA is taking stakeholder consultation extremely seriously. We commend the high level of their professionalism in this complicated process with tight deadlines,” said Jiri Krol, AIMA’s Director of Policy and Government Affairs.

AIMA said it hoped that ESMA would implement the AIFMD in such a way as to take account of one of the most striking features of the hedge fund sector – its great diversity.

“Flexibility, proportionality and openness are three key features which the regulation should retain if it is to succeed in delivering the policy objectives while preserving the existing breadth of business models and strategies,” said Mr Krol.

AIMA pointed out that while some of the larger hedge fund firms may employ several hundred staff and manage over $10 billion, the majority are smaller businesses, with much fewer staff and managing assets of less than $1 billion in many cases.

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For media enquiries, please contact Christen Thomson, AIMA’s Director of Communications.
Tel: +44 (0)20 7822 8380; Email: cthomson@aima.org

About AIMA

As the global hedge fund association, the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA) has over 1,200 corporate members (with over 5,000 individual contacts) worldwide, based in over 40 countries.

Members include hedge fund managers, fund of hedge funds managers, prime brokers, legal and accounting firms, investors, fund administrators and independent fund directors. They all benefit from AIMA’s active influence in policy development, its leadership in industry initiatives, including education and sound practice manuals and its excellent reputation with regulators worldwide.

AIMA is a dynamic organisation that reflects its members’ interests and provides them with a vibrant global network. AIMA is committed to developing industry skills and education standards and is a co-founder of the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst designation (CAIA) – the industry’s first and only specialised educational standard for alternative investment specialists. For further information, please visit AIMA’s website, www.aima.org.

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